Hello from above our magnificent planet Earth.

We've had such thorough training, we've had an excellent team on the ground. With the minor glitches that have occurred, we've been able to take care of them. And the teams on the ground are getting tons of incredible data.

There are some very significant changes in the way the fluids are distributed in our body, the way our heart functions initially, and as well as our bone and muscle.

Some things are only capable of being done in space. Examples of that are looking at our Earth from that far away, and understanding the entire processes of storms and weather patterns, and oceans, and coastlines.

It's such a long mission and we get to spend so much time in space... we're doing such exciting research. And I don't want to overemphasize the life science research, but as a physician the life science research that we're doing is extremely exciting.

Whenever I do get to look out, it is glorious. Even the stars have a special brightness.

I have a computer screen near my seat where I monitor the overall health of the vehicle and pick up any problems that might be occurring early on or once we see any kind of a malfunction or anything unusual that's happening, we can look at the data and figure out what that is.